Alternatives to Apple Pay on the horizon

By Michael Lloyd

If you're not an iOS fan, you may have felt
a little left out when Apple Pay launched in the UK. However, you won't have to
switch mobile platforms to be part of the newest payments technology. Apple may have been first to the party with a
comprehensive contactless payment platform, but upcoming offerings from rival
tech firms such as Samsung and Google promise to capitalise on the British
public's growing appetite for this type of technology.

"In recent months, we've seen the
emergence of so many new ways to pay," Paula Felstead, ‎chief officer of business
strategy and innovation at Visa Europe, said in an emailed response to questions.
"We know the appetite is there for contactless, as we recently passed the
1 billionth transaction in Europe inside a year for the first time. It's there
for mobile payment, too -- 60% of UK consumers told us recently that they
expect to make payments on a mobile phone by 2020."

Here are a few Apple Pay alternatives
making their way to the UK, and one that's already here.

1. Samsung
Pay.
Samsung's answer to Apple Pay launched in the firm's home country of South
Korea in August 2015, and is due in the US in September. There's no official UK
roll-out date yet, but Samsung has said Britain will be the first country to
get the service in Europe.

Samsung
Pay works in much the same way as Apple Pay, says Mike Cowen, head of emerging
payments products at MasterCard.

Apple Pay and Samsung Pay "both use a
process called 'tokenisation'
to process payments, which swaps out the real card number with one that's
specific to the device," Cowen says. "It also generates one-time payment
credentials, in a similar fashion to EMV chips, which means these services work
in much the same way as chip-and-PIN cards."

This means retailers will never see your
card details, and your account information is not stored on your device.

Unlike Apple Pay, Samsung's payment
platform will leverage the Magnetic Secure Transmission (MST) technology the
company acquired with its purchase of LoopPay,
as well as the Near Field Communication (NFC) standard employed by most contactless
payment systems. This could offer Samsung a big advantage in the US, where mag-stripe
readers are the norm, but will likely have little impact here, where almost all
payment terminals are NFC-enabled.

At launch, Samsung Pay will work with the
Galaxy S6 and Note 5, but will likely be compatible with most of its future
high-end devices.

2. Android
Pay.
Google's upcoming Android Pay will also
work in a similar fashion to Apple's service. In fact, its technology is nearly
identical to Apple's -- Android users will tap their devices on NFC-enabled
contactless terminals to make payments. The service should roll out in the US
by the end of the year, but there is no official date on UK availability yet.

But when it does make an appearance here, Android
Pay will have two big advantages over Apple's platform. Firstly, it will work
on a broader range of devices, given that Google's mobile OS has a higher share
of the mobile market than iOS in the UK.

Additionally, Android Pay users will have
more options when it comes to authenticating payments, potentially making the
purchasing process a bit quicker. Apple Pay authenticates payments via
fingerprint scanner. Google's alternative lets users OK purchases via their
screen unlock method, be it fingerprint scan, a PIN, a password, a pattern or
facial recognition.

Android Pay will work on any device
equipped with any devices equipped with it's KitKat 4.4 operating system or
higher.

3. bPay
by Barclaycard.
If you're not ready to make the leap to paying via mobile, there's still a
gadget available that allows you to make contactless payments without having to
trouble your purse or wallet.

Barclays initially decided against offering
its support to Apple Pay -- though it eventually decided to support it -- and
instead broke out its own contactless payment service, bPay.

bPay allows you to link an NFC-enabled fob,
sticker or wristband to any bank account. You can then wave your chosen gadget
in front of any contactless payment terminal to pay for low-value purchases.

You'll need to pay up the £24.99 for one of
these devices, and will only be able to use them to make payments up to the
value of £20 (rising to £30 in September).

Which
will reign?Cowan expects other platform providers will look to
follow Google as part of an effort to offer the most seamless service possible.
However, he says, all the payment services are competing with each other, each
trying to best the others.

"They'll all be looking to achieve the
most streamlined, the most frictionless experience," he says. "Because these
are software-enabled, connected devices, those experiences can evolve over
time. But until all of these different options have made it to market, we're
not going to know what people are going to prefer."